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From: peter@graffiti.UUCP (Peter da Silva)
Newsgroups: net.micro.atari
Subject: Re: DRI agrees to change GEM
Message-ID: <279@graffiti.UUCP>
Date: Wed, 9-Oct-85 07:29:11 EDT
Article-I.D.: graffiti.279
Posted: Wed Oct  9 07:29:11 1985
Date-Received: Mon, 14-Oct-85 06:12:42 EDT
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Organization: The Power Elite, Houston, TX
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> There is a difference between a patent and a copyright.  What Apple apparently
> has is a patent, since a copyright would not prevent anybody from recreating
> from scratch software with the same functionality (consider the GNU effort).

Yes it could. Look at the PAC-MAN wars a while ago. Apple is suing DRI on the
exact same grounds. They're almost certain to go after AMIGA next. I'm mad as
hell about this bovine excrement, myself. GEM isn't even anywhere near being a
good copy of the Mac desktop in function: it just looks like it. Also, UNIX
isn't protected by patent (except for set-uid bits) or copyright, but by trade-
secret protection (they reckon it's too hard to reverse engineer, I guess).